


'til all my scars bleed gold

by IvyOnTheHolodeck



Series: higher, faster, everlasting [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Compliant (technically), Dark Matters, Friendship, Friendship is more powerful than secret government agencies, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents, spy school babey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25721632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyOnTheHolodeck/pseuds/IvyOnTheHolodeck
Summary: Most Dark Matters trainees know better than to bother Sasha while she’s studying. The last one dumb enough to tap her on the shoulder had to wear a brace on his wrist for a month. Sasha doesn’t start fights - she ends them.Which is why the comm messages buzzing against her thigh could only be from one person.
Relationships: Benzaiten Steel & Sasha Wire
Series: higher, faster, everlasting [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1796644
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	'til all my scars bleed gold

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for injections and needles. (Me? Projecting my frustration with the injections I need to manage my chronic illness? Noooo...)

Most Dark Matters trainees know better than to bother Sasha while she’s studying. The last one dumb enough to tap her on the shoulder had to wear a brace on his wrist for a month. Sasha doesn’t start fights - she ends them. 

Which is why the comm messages buzzing against her thigh could only be from one person. 

Sasha grits her teeth and focuses on the tablet in front of her. Her leg buzzes again, and she sighs. Fine. Slipping from her chair, she tucks her books into a messenger bag and disappears into the library’s shelves. Once she’s out of sight, she pulls out her comms and frowns at the messages on her screen. 

_sasha_

_saaaaasha_

_paging w, w, do you copy_

_im all alooooooone_

Since her shades cover the top half of her face, she allows herself the luxury of rolling her eyes.

_What do you want, Benten._

_sasha!! hi!! hello!!_

_have I said recently how awesome you are_

_You did. You were attempting to flatter me into giving you my cryptography homework._

_well it didnt work, did it? so the compliment counts as genuine_

A few moments pass. Sasha waits for the “Benten typing” icon to appear, but there’s nothing. 

_Benten?_

_im fine_

_That’s hardly reassuring. Are you sure?_

_yeah totally im fantastic_

_real talk though, on a scale from one to peepholes in the old town high bathroom, how creepy is it if i hack the hcpd security cameras to, you know_

_keep an eye on him_

_I’m on my way._

Sasha climbs out of the library through the sunroof - a more obvious escape route than she'd prefer, but time is of the essence - and runs lightly over the carapace of the Dark Matters Academy until she reaches the dormitories. Benten thoughtfully left the window to their room open. She slings herself through, rolling to her feet, careful not to turn an ankle. 

Benten’s bare legs dangle from the top bunk of their bunkbed. He stares at the ceiling, hands folded behind his neck, comms lying on his sternum. “Injection day,” he tells the spackled patch above his pillow. 

That explains the booty shorts - easy access to the meat of his thigh. Sasha had hoped Benten would get used to the weekly injections after a couple months, but he seems to have gone the opposite way. Last week she’d run into him leaving the restroom wiping his mouth and ashen as the corpse he’d once been. She should consider stocking up on antiemitics.

“Would you like me to do it?”

“Nah, I just gotta work up to it. Love me some life juice. Ghost-be-gone. Anti-zombie sauce.”

“You do have a predisposition toward brain-eating, since you must have absorbed Juno’s in the womb.” Benten chuckles, but it’s half-hearted enough that Sasha raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”

Benten shrugs, listless. “Not the same without him. He’s supposed to snark back. Without him, it’s like I’m dishonoring his memory.”

“He’s still alive.”

“He might as well be dead to me, though. Burgers said-“

“It’s _Burgess_ , Benten, you don’t want to make an enemy of our supervisor-“

“-that he’d personally blast us full of buckshot if I ever tried to contact Juno.”

“Agent Burgess doesn’t like to get his hands dirty,” Sasha points out. “You should take it as a compliment.” Benten rolls over to give her a look. She folds her arms and stares back. “I’m not sorry for saving your life, if that’s where this is going.”

“I’m playing pet rabbit to a bunch of fanatics who dangle my life-saving meds over my head, while Juno drinks himself into my grave. This isn’t living, Sasha.”

She turns away so he can’t see the expression on her face. Pulling down the medical kit from their closet, she peels a syringe out of its sterile packet. “This can’t be worse than living with Sarah.”

“Yeah, but with Ma there was an end in sight. And I had-“ He cuts himself off. 

Juno. It always comes back to Juno, doesn’t it. She’d be a hypocrite to blame him, since Juno was the reason she’d given up her future to save Benten in the first place. Sasha wonders whether Juno knows the effect he has. People take in his chainmail armor of obstinate snark, with all that vulnerability visible through gaps in the links, and they’ll do just about anything to put a smile on his face.

“Burgess might change his mind someday,” she offers. 

Benten scoffs. “Are we talking about the same guy? He banned all trainees from having ‘sex hair’ because he said it gave away our movements, Sash, he isn’t going to let me go wandering with resurrection rum in my veins.”

“We could make him.” Sasha rolls their mini fridge out from under the bed, pressing her thumb to the scanner and typing in her code. It clicks open with a hiss. Three little bottles stand in a row on the top shelf, more innocuous than they have any right to be. “If we were in charge, we could set the rules ourselves.”

“We’re nineteen, they’re not handing over the reins any time soon.”

“Then we wait,” she says. The syringe needle pierces the rubber top of a bottle, sucking up its golden contents. The chilled nanites seethe as she extracts the necessary milliliter, returning the rest of the bottle to the fridge and relocking it. “Burgess is poised to become a regional supervisor in the next few years. I’ll ask him to mentor me. We’re already two of their most promising students. We can climb together until no one can tell us what to do.”

Benten huffs. “That’s playing the long game.”

She points the needle skyward, taps its side, presses the plunger until a bead of amber appears at the needle tip. “I’d rather play the long game than fold.”

There’s a pause. She’s too well trained to hold her breath.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“You’re going to need someone else on your team if you’re playing to win, Sasha, if you can’t even stick a proper landing.”

Visible relief is a liability, so she doesn’t let any of it show. “Some of us spent our school days studying rather than tap dancing in the sewers, Benten.”

“The acoustics down there were fantastic. And besides-“ he somersaults off the bed, rolling to his feet and whipping an unlit plasma knife up to her throat- “it comes in handy.”

And Sasha had thought Juno was dramatic. She pushes the knife away and hands Benten the syringe. “Take your injection, and then I’ll walk you through the cryptography homework if you teach me that move.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m on tumblr at [ivyontheholodeck](https://ivyontheholodeck.tumblr.com) \- come say hi!


End file.
